‘I will do anything I can,’ said Kate, shortly. And the two girls withdrew at last, somewhat chilled by the want of sympathy. Had they but known what excitement, what commotion, their simple news carried into that still volcano of a house!
He was to come in a week. Kate schooled herself to be very strong, and think nothing of it, but her heart grew sick when she thought of the Florence scenes all over again—perhaps worse, for at Florence at least there were two. And to Ombra the day passed with feverish haste, and all her pretences at tranquillity and good humour began to fail in the rising tide of excitement.
‘I shall be better again when he has gone away,’ she said to her mother. ‘But, oh! how can I—how can I take it quietly? Could you, if you were in my position? Think of all the misery and uncertainty. And he must be coming for a purpose. He would not come unless he had something to say.’
‘Oh! Ombra, if there was anything, why should it not be said in a letter?’ cried her mother. ‘You have letters often enough. I wish you would just put them in your pocket, and not read them at the breakfast table. You keep me in terror lest Kate should see the handwriting or something. After all our precautions——’
‘Can you really suppose that Kate is so ignorant?’ said Ombra. ‘Do you think she does not know well enough whom my letters are from?’
‘Then, for God’s sake, if you think so, let me tell her, and be done with this horrible secret,’ cried her mother. ‘It kills me to keep up this concealment; and if you think she knows, why, why should it go on?’
‘You are so impetuous, mamma!’ said Ombra, with a smile. ‘There is a great difference between her guessing and direct information procured from ourselves. And how can we tell what she might do? She would interfere; it is her nature. You could not trust anything so serious to such a child.’
‘Kate is not a child now,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘And oh! Ombra, if you will consider how ungrateful, how untrue, how unkind it is——’
‘Stop, mamma!’ cried Ombra, with a flush of angry colour. ‘That is enough—that is a great deal too much—ungrateful! Are we expected to be grateful to Kate? You will tell me next to look up to her, to reverence her——’
‘Ombra, you have always been hard upon Kate.’